Installing Ubuntu Edgy on a Thinkpad X41 Tablet

open source, Technical, Thinkpad, Ubuntu, X41 1 Minute

This is the first in a series of of posts detailing what is required in order to install the Linux distribution Ubuntu 6.10 (codename Edgy) on a Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC on a separate partition to Windows XP Tablet Edition. It is entirely based on my experiences, and I don’t claim it to be either an official nor all-encompassing list of required actions, merely what I had to do to get what I personally wanted on my laptop.

All of the information contained in this series of posts is available elsewhere on the web, but it is fractured into sepearate wiki posts, blog posts, discussion forums and official documentation. With these other sources, many different options are often covered, e.g. Gnome & KDE, i386 and 64 bit architectures – my posts are just concerned with the Gnome edition of Ubuntu Edgy on i386, specifically as it applies the the Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad X41.

As such, these articles will cover both generic issues, such as getting MP3s working, and also issues specific to the X41, e.g. getting the screen to rotate when in tablet mode and getting the tablet pen to work. Also, for the eye-candy junkies, I also install the Beryl window manager, which looks so damn pretty that Vista should be ashamed of itself.

Table of Contents

  1. Basic Installation instructions
  2. Installing Multimedia components
  3. Enabling Thinkpad specific components
  4. Installing utility programs, including Java-centric programming tools
  5. Installing the Beryl window manager
  6. Upgrading to version 7.04, Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
  7. Working with Amarok music player and Sony Ericsson w810i Walkman
  8. Upgrading Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10)

Published by Shane O'Sullivan

I am a software engineer and manager from Ireland. I spent 7 years working in Ireland from 2003 – 2010, then ten years in Silicon Valley from 2010 to 2020. In California I spent about 6.5 years at Facebook Engineering, the last three of which I was an engineering manager in the Ads organisation focusing on customer facing products for creating and managing ads. At Stripe I built the Developer Productivity organisation, with teams that were responsible for the use of the Ruby language, testing infrastructure, documentation, developer tooling (e.g. IDE integrations) and more. At Promise, I was Head of Engineering from 2018 – 2020, responsible for building the first few iterations of our products, hiring for all product roles, meeting with clients and investors, and anything else needed to get a tiny startup bootstrapped and successful. Now I’m back in Ireland, working on my next company. Coming soon (as of early 2023!). This blog contains my various musings on all things technical/interesting on the interweb and beyond.

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